March 2010

Carrying the strategy of "looking at things differently"
to extremes brings us to the realm of the fool, the
being for whom everyday ways of understanding have little meaning.

It's the fool's job to extol the trivial, trifle
with the exalted, and parody the common perception
of a situation. In doing so, the fool makes us conscious of the habits
we take for granted and rarely question. A good fool needs to be part actor
and part poet, part philosopher and
part psychologist.

And throughout history, the fool has been consulted by Egyptian
pharaohs and Babylonian kings, Chinese emperors, Greeks tyrants, and
Hopi Indian chiefs.

The fool will reverse our standard assumptions.
He'll say, "If a man is sitting on a horse facing the rear, why do we
assume that it is the man who is backwards, and not the horse?"

The fool notices things that other people overlook.
He might ask, "Why do people who pour cream into their coffee do so
after the coffee is already in the cup, rather than pouring the cream in
first and saving themselves the trouble of stirring?"

The fool can also be irreverent. He'll pose riddles
such as,

"What does a rich man put in his pocket that
the poor man throws away?" When he answers, "Snot," he forces us to
re-examine the sanctity of our everyday rituals.

The fool can be cryptic. He'll say the best way to
see something is with your ears. Initially, this may seem weird, but
after you've thought about it, you might agree that listening to a story
conjures up more images than watching television.

The fool can be absurd. Having lost his donkey, a
fool got down on his knees and began thanking God. A passerby saw him
and asked, "Your donkey is missing; why are you thanking God?" The fool
replied, "I'm thanking Him for seeing to it that I wasn't riding him at
the time. Otherwise, I would be missing as well."

The fool will take the contrary position in most
conversations. Whereas many people would agree that, "If a thing is
worth doing, it's worth doing well," The fool might say,

"You
don't have to do things well! Indeed, it's okay to do them poorly;
otherwise you'll never let yourself be a beginner at a new activity."

The
great benefit of the fool's antics and observations is that they stimulate
our thinking. They jolt us in the same way that a splash of
cold water awakens us when we are drowsy.

Question: Where has "thinking like a fool" helped you look at
a problem in a helpful way?